The Dead Sea (البحر المّيت)

By Ameer Hamad (tr. Hoda Ali)

The women here are coated in mud, their bodies do not comfort you

You stand near the sinkholes where the sea used to bury its dead

Before its water receded,

When they cut off its coronary artery with the “Star of David” scalpel

You remember drowning in it as a child, chasing a yellow boat

Like the sun god’s boat, with nothing visible to you except salt

You imagine your premonitions driving motorboats that used to connect the two banks

The many-armed sulfur awakens Sodom on your shoulders

You feel the cavities as they rise from the ground to your body

And you think of the irony of the omniscient narrator who is now completing his manuscripts

With the book called, Two Seas Canal, and with the fish of the Red Sea

Swimming in front of you soon, indifferent to the barriers.